Forgive the pun but the Brits were like choir boys compared to the church. The brits fucked us because thats the way it was back then, the church fucked us because they could. Because they represented good we left them into our homes, schools, hospitals where they preyed on the vunerable. They should be barred from the country and returned to rome.

The church are the masters when it comes to controlling people and retaining an empire. 2,000 years baby! The brits are proud of their empire as was, but it only lasted a couple of hundred years, and people didnt show up every sunday to kiss their ass either, or let them ride their kids and control their schools. No the church are the masters alright. You can’t even leave them now, even though none of us entered voluntarily – http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/1012/breaking32.html?via=mr.

I was watching Dawkin’s documentary The God Delusion recently. One of the more interesting points he made was about how religions claim children as their own from day one. We would never dream of designating kids according to their political convictions, it would be ridiculous to us to hear children being described as Fianna Fáil children, or Fine Gael children, and yet we think nothing of them being described as Catholic or Protestant. Imagine if a political party wanted the children of its supporters educated separately to other children, and given an education that was skewed with its “ethos”. We would think it was crazy, but we accept (and in many cases, demand) the church doing the same. Just one more example of how they have people’s heads totally warped.

Well done again Bock for keeping this issue of Bertie and the nuns live. Amazing (or maybe not) that the mainstream media are so quiet on it.

Cradle to the grave medical care. The child is claimed for Jesus and the mother’s pelvis cracked to make an easier passage for the next little sunbeam.

You’d think it would have dawned on Ireland by now that religious orders are inherently weird. As in not very sane.

In the 1980’s there was a sex education class in our new secondary school. In walked two fifty year old nuns. Thats right. Two women who by definition were the least qualified to address the subject of sex and who were by vow never going to experience it.

Think about the madness of that for a moment. I woulnd’t let mad twats like that anywhere near children. Dawkins is right about something else as well. Allowing a priest or failed priest disguised as a normal adult to inform children that some half-leprechaun half-man in the middle east died to lift guilt from their souls is a form of psychological child abuse.

Anyways. See yiz all at mass on Sunday for the lump of state approved cannibalism.

The nuns would wish to control the religious ethical policy of the hospital, just as they do in the Mater public hospital, which Ahern’s government bought from them with public fiunds while leaving them in control.

Ahern’s desire to placate the nuns is something of a mystery, but his actions in that regard are well documented on this site and elsewhere.

I’ve spent far too many months in a Children’s Hospital. You are absolutely correct, Bock. Demented and distracted out of your mind driving a sick child to hospital, well, the least you could do is keep the damn hospital out of a congested traffic zone. I’ve blown through red lights accidentally I admit. Sleep deprived or distracted. Never mind the challenges of the ambulance. Even with it being the law in this state to pull over for emergency vehicles, in a city it’s not always possible to do.

After days and nights sitting with a sick child the most therapueutic thing is to walk outside in the fresh air in a courtyard or garden, not worry about being mugged. It’s a big incentive for the sick kid too to get to the point where the wheelchair, or, with the small kids, little toy wagon gets pulled out into the sunshine. It’s worth millions!
If the nuns provided topnotch care well, fair play to them. I’d send my kid to Genghis Khan’s wetnurse if it meant he’d get good care. My preference would be a secular organization but I am the one who, when told I’d have to have a csection, carefully considered the calendar for Jewish holidays and picked a day when I knew they’d all be in the hospital and not in temple.

OK Bock, misunderstood on the nun’s thing. I thought it was a Catholic hospital. So this is similar to the national schools set up. As a precedent then does that mean that they can dictate the “ethos” of the place?
I’m puzzled as to what the advantage was in granting this. What are the theories?

Bock – “My theory remains unchanged. Their former book-keeper, Bertie Ahern, seems to owe them an extraordinary amount of favours.”

Perhaps it isn’t a question of any type of blackmail but rather of his own personal motivations and alligences. Onward christian soldiers and all that…

“The Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George is a Catholic order of chivalry. According to legendary tradition it was established by Constantine the Great. Between 1520 and 1545 two brothers of the Angeli Comneni family established the order. Members of the Angeli Comneni family remained grand masters throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1699 Francesco Farnese, Duke of Parma was recognised as grand master. In 1731 his son and successor, Antonio Farnese, Duke of Parma, died without male heirs. He was succeeded by the first Bourbon grand master Charles, Duke of Parma (later King Charles III of Spain). Since that time members of the House of Bourbon have been grand masters of the order.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Military_Constantinian_Order_of_Saint_George

“Over the last century there have been numerous knights and dames invested into the Constantinian Order from across the island of Ireland including members of the old Gaelic nobility, the Order of Malta, the clergy as well as parliamentarians and leading businessmen. The first known Irishman to be invested into the Order was Benedotto Harvey who was appointed a Knight of Grace in 1728. The late Denis O’Conor Don, Head of the House of Connaught, and descendant of the dynasty that ruled as High Kings of Ireland until the Anglo-Norman conquest at the end of the twelfth century, was a member.

In 2004, President Mary McAleese of Ireland was awarded the Collar of the Constantinian Order at a ceremony at Àras an Uachtaràin, and Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern, TD, then President of the European Council, was also honoured.”

Other knights include the current Vice-Delegate of the Delegation, Judge Patrick Clyne, the Order’s former Vice-Delegate and Chancellor (2003-2006) and current President of the Association of Papal Orders in Ireland, Senator Donal Lydon, HE Mr Michael Joseph McDonnell, Lieutenant of the papal Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre, HE Mr Dáithi O’Ceallaígh, Ambassador of Ireland to the Court of St James’s, The Rt Hon Paul Murphy, MP, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the former Lord Mayor of Dublin Mr Royston Brady, the Ambassador of Poland to Ireland HE Mr Witold Sobkow, the Vice President of the Irish Association of the Order of Malta, Mr Patrick White, and the Association’s Chancellor Mr Sean Kevin Cunnane.http://www.realcasadiborbone.it/ita/delegazioni/uk_ir.htm

Bock correct me if I am wrong; did the nuns not sell the Mater Private hospital to a consortium of developers and speculators some years ago during the boom days for megabucks?.
Are they still involved in the Mater public hospital then.?
The only hospital I believe they are still managing is the Bon Secours in Glasnevin which- to give it its due- is a very well run private hospital.

As far as I know, the nuns still control the ethics committees of both hospitals. Therefore, activities such as stem-cell research, which are perfectly legal, cannot be carried out there. Correct me if I’m wrong about this.

It also appears that the new national paediatric hospital will be run on Catholic lines, even though it’s paid for by everyone, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and atheist alike.

That’s what the nuns said! The question remains as to why this site was chosen. Strange coincidence that this site is/was in Bertie’s constituency and the associated Urgent and Ambulatory Care Centre is/was to be built in Mary Harney’s constituency. Bring on the new government’s review!